He thrust his fingers through his hair, making it stand out all over the place, then smiled reluctantly.
‘OK—all right—so you were both right, and I was wrong. Maybe becoming a GP would be a bad career move for me.’
‘If you were on the verge of strangling the patients you saw after just one afternoon, then it sure would be,’ she replied. ‘Deltaron is where you belong, Tom. I think you need a break—a long holiday—but I think Deltaron is where you’re meant to be.’
‘But only if I get myself a life outside my work, just as you should.’
The smile on her face disappeared.
‘I thought we agreed this subject was a no-go area?’
‘Can’t blame a bloke from trying.’ He grinned, and she shook her head at him.
‘You’re completely incorrigible.’
‘I think that was one of the nicer things Gertie Stanbury used to say about me when I was at school,’ he replied. ‘In fact—’
‘The very person I wanted to see,’ Lauren interrupted as she came out of her physiotherapy room and saw them. ‘Tom, I have Miss Stanbury with me, and she’d very much like to thank you personally for the loan of your house.’
That he didn’t want to be thanked was plain. In fact, he had the look of a man who would have preferred to have his toenails pulled out, but Eve wasn’t going to let him get away with it, at least not this time.
‘Tom, if she wants to thank you, you have to let her,’ she
declared, and she saw reluctance and unwillingness war with each other on his face for a second, then he sighed.
‘OK—all right,’ he said.
‘And I dare you to call her Gertie to her face,’ Eve added in an undertone as she followed him down the corridor.
‘Are you kidding?’ he protested. ‘I want to live to be fifty.’
Eve didn’t think the elderly lady would have cared what Tom called her. She was far too overwhelmed by his generosity.
‘It’s almost like being at home,’ she said, her small face wreathed in smiles, ‘and I can’t thank you enough for allowing me to stay there. I just hope I’m not inconveniencing you.’
‘Not in the slightest,’ Tom insisted. ‘Stay for as long as you like, and most definitely until your own home is habitable again.’
‘Amanda Lovelace drove me round to Gull Close this morning,’ Gertrude continued. ‘Seeing it…I can’t believe Tassie and I got out of there alive.’
‘It’s not going to always look like that, Miss Stanbury,’ Tom said softly, seeing the stricken look that had suddenly appeared in her eyes. ‘Once the fire brigade has pumped out the water, and it’s been dried out, you’ll soon have it looking as it did before.’
‘I just wish I’d thought to take my papers and photographs with me when I went up into the attic,’ she said. ‘When I looked in the window, they were all there—floating about in the water.’
‘Miss Stanbury—’
‘I know—I know,’ she interrupted as Tom looked at her with concern. ‘The most important thing is Tassie and I are here to tell the tale. As for my photographs, papers…’ Her lip trembled slightly, and she firmed it. ‘Not important.’
Tom hunkered down on his heels in front of her, his green eyes soft with understanding.
‘You haven’t lost them,’ he said. ‘If this was the summer we could air-dry them for you in a trice but at the moment what we
need is a freezer. If we can find someone with a big freezer, all we need to do is to pop your photographs and papers in, freeze them, and they can be air-dried when the weather is better.’
‘And that will work?’ Gertrude declared, and Eve could see hope stirring in the elderly lady’s eyes.
‘Yup,’ Tom said, and Gertrude shook her head in amazement.
‘The wonders of modern technology.’
‘Nah.’ Tom grinned. ‘Knowledge gained from a misspent youth.’
Gertrude chuckled wryly.
‘You haven’t changed a bit, Tom Cornish,’ she declared. ‘You’re just the same lippy, opinionated, and—’ she stretched out and caught hold of one of his hands, and gripped it firmly in her own frail one ‘—downright kind and decent human being you always were.’
‘And there was me thinking I had you fooled,’ Tom said, his cheeks darkening, and Gertrude shook her head.
‘Not for a minute, lad. Not for one single minute.’
‘That was kind of you,’ Eve said when she and Tom left the surgery some time later.
‘I wasn’t lying to Gertie,’ Tom replied, taking hold of her elbow to steer her round the rubble in Harbour Road. ‘She might not be able to save all of her photographs and private papers, but she should be able to salvage most.’
‘I didn’t mean that,’ Eve said. ‘I meant the way you talked to her. You’ve a good heart, Tom.’
‘Anyone else would have done the same,’ he said dismissively, but she could see the embarrassment back on his face again, and stared at him curiously.
‘Why does gratitude make you so uncomfortable?’ she said, and to her surprise he didn’t meet her gaze.
‘I guess…’ Tom took an awkward breath. ‘Maybe it’s because my father always battered it into me when I was a kid that nobody does anything for nothing. “There’s no such thing
as a free lunch, Tom.” That was one of his favourite sayings, so
I suppose I find it hard to believe people are on the level.’
‘Gertrude is, and she knows you are,’ she said softly.
‘I’d rather you did,’ he said, turning to face her, and it was her turn to look away.
‘Your promise didn’t last very long,’ she said.
‘Yeah, well, never trust a Cornish.’
She could hear the laughter in his voice, and shook her head.
‘Ain’t that the truth,’ she replied. ‘Tony at The Smugglers’ has huge freezers. I bet he’d offer to help Gertrude in an instant.’
‘I understand he’s doing very well in hospital,’ Tom said, and Eve couldn’t help but laugh.
‘You mean, you’ve heard he’s giving the staff merry hell, demanding to be discharged.’
‘I heard that, too.’ Tom grinned. ‘I’m afraid he’s going to have to take things a lot easier from now on whether he wants to or not.’
‘I think this flood is going to change quite a few people’s lives.’ Eve sighed.
‘I’m hoping so.’
His words were innocuous enough, but she wasn’t deceived for a second.
‘I thought we agreed—’
His green eyes met hers.
‘You can run, Eve, but you can’t hide.’
He was right, she thought, and his words became even more prophetic after they’d reached her cottage and she made them both a simple meal of pasta Bolognese. Every time she looked up his gaze was on her, thoughtful, pensive. Every time she tried to start a conversation, he answered her in monosyllables and she knew why. He was waiting. Waiting for her to talk about the baby, and though she knew they had to talk about it, she didn’t want to see his eyes darken again with pain or to relive the decision she’d made all those years ago.
‘Would you like anything else to eat?’ she said hopefully after she’d gathered up their empty plates. ‘I have cheese and biscuits, and I managed to get some fruit from the corner shop. Goodness knows how it survived the flood, but it did.’
‘No, thank you,’ he replied.
‘A coffee, then?’ she suggested, knowing her voice was beginning to sound slightly panic-stricken but quite unable to control it. ‘It’s only instant but—’
‘I don’t want a coffee, thank you,’ he interrupted. ‘What I want is to talk to you.’
‘Tom, I’m really tired,’ she said quickly. ‘In fact, I thought I might actually have an early night.’
He got to his feet, took the plates from her hands and put them back on the table.
‘Eve, I could get a call at any time from Deltaron,’ he declared, ‘and I don’t want to leave Penhally without us having spoken about…about our child.’
He was right about the call, and she knew from his set expression he wasn’t going to take no for an answer, but when she walked over to the sofa she sat down wearily.
‘Tom, what is there left for us to say?’ she murmured. ‘I was pregnant, I decided I couldn’t have the baby, I had an abortion. I know you must hate me for what I did—’
‘I don’t hate you,’ he interrupted, sitting down beside her. ‘Maybe I thought I did, when you first told me—when I thought of the son or daughter I could have had—but those thoughts were the thoughts of the man I am now. The man I was all those years ago would have felt only relief that you didn’t have the baby.’
‘Relief?’ she echoed, and he took a deep breath.
She had opened her heart to him, told him everything, and she deserved the same truth from him no matter how badly it reflected upon him.
‘Eve, I’m ashamed to admit it, but if I’m honest—and I want
to be completely honest with you—I wouldn’t have wanted a baby, not then. I had this wonderful career, you see,’ he continued, his mouth twisting into an ironic and bitter smile. ‘I was Dr Tom Cornish, all set to conquer the world, and a baby…I would have seen a baby as an encumbrance, that I was being trapped into a responsibility I didn’t want to have, just as my father was.’
‘And now you wish I hadn’t done it,’ she murmured, pleating and unpleating her fingers, ‘but I can’t undo it, Tom, no matter how much I might want to. I was weak all those years ago, took the easy way out, just as you said I did.’
‘Weak?’ he exclaimed. ‘Eve, you took the hardest decision anyone can ever make, and you took it alone. When I think of you going to the clinic by yourself…’ He shook his head. ‘No one should have to go through that alone, and yet you did. You were the one who possessed the strength all those years ago, not me.’
‘It wasn’t strength, Tom, it was cowardice,’ she said, her voice raw, harsh. ‘I was so desperate. Desperate and scared that I wouldn’t be able to cope, and I wish—I so wish—I could go back, and do things differently, but all the wishing in the world isn’t going to make that happen.’
Awkwardly, he half reached for her, but he didn’t know whether she would reject his touch—not want it—so he clasped her hand in his instead.
‘If anyone’s to blame for what happened, it’s me,’he insisted. ‘You should have felt you could come to me, and the fact you didn’t…I let you down, Eve. Me.’
‘I don’t even know whether we had a son or a daughter, Tom,’ she said, her lips trembling. ‘I felt—I don’t know why—it was a little girl, but one of the nurses…She said it wasn’t a baby, not a real baby, just a collection of cells. But it was a baby, Tom. Our baby—and I killed it.’
He felt his heart twist with pain, but what deepened the pain,
intensified it, were the tears he could see shimmering in her eyes, tears he knew were going to fall at any moment, and holding her hand was not enough—not nearly enough—and he put his arm around her, drawing her close.
‘Don’t, Eve,
don’t
,’ he begged, hating to see her suffering, but she misunderstood him.
‘It’s the truth, Tom,’ she said. ‘I did it. It was my decision, not yours. Mine, and I want so much to say I’m sorry to our daughter, but I can’t. There’s not even a grave I can stand beside so I won’t ever be able to tell our baby that I’m sorry, and sometimes…’
The tears in her eyes overflowed, and Tom put his other arm round her, and held her tightly, his own throat constricted.
‘Eve, listen to me,’ he said into her hair. ‘If we had made love ten years ago, and you’d discovered you were pregnant, would you have had an abortion?’
‘Of course I wouldn’t,’ she said into his chest.
‘Why not?’ he said, knowing full well what her answer would be, but knowing, too, that he had to make her say it, see it.
‘Because I had a good job ten years ago,’ she exclaimed, ‘and a flat of my own in Newquay!’
‘None of which you had when you were twenty-two. Eve…’ He clasped her face between his hands and forced her to look at him. ‘You did what you thought was right twenty years ago, and now you have to forgive yourself, to move on, and believe you’re entitled to a future, to happiness.’
‘I don’t know if I can,’ she said brokenly.
He smoothed her hair back from her damp cheeks.
‘You asked me—oh, it seems a lifetime ago now—why I came back to Penhally. I said I could give you one reason, but not the other—not then. Well, I can give you that other reason now. I came back because I’ve never stopped loving you.’
She stared at him in open-mouthed amazement for a full minute, then drew back from him.
‘You’re asking me to believe you’ve been in love with me for the past twenty years?’ she exclaimed.
‘Is that so very surprising?’ he said.
It clearly was to her, he thought, seeing her shake her head, and her words confirmed it.
‘Tom, if you’d truly felt like that you would have kept in touch,’ she protested, ‘but you never phoned, or wrote, or made any attempt to see me.’
‘Because I was the one who walked away,’ he said, willing her to believe him. ‘I was the one who’d said I didn’t want to be tied down, didn’t want a wife or a family. You would have been quite within your rights to say,
On your bike, Tom Cornish
, and, as the years passed, I told myself you must be married, so I thought—I felt—I couldn’t come back.’
‘And you’ve been pining for me for the last twenty years?’ she said, not bothering to hide her cynicism. ‘I don’t think so, Tom.’
‘No, I haven’t been pining for you for the last twenty years,’ he admitted, ‘but, because I made the biggest mistake of my life, I have spent those years trying to convince myself that the image I had of you couldn’t be a real one, that no one could be so special, or different.’
‘I’m not different, or special, Tom,’ she said.
‘You are, and because you are I kept on dating, and dating, and…’ He broke off awkwardly, with a crooked smile and a gesture of dismissal. ‘When none of my relationships worked out, I finally had to admit what I’d known all along. That I was looking for someone like you, and there wasn’t anyone like you, there never could be.’
‘So you came back to Penhally hoping to find me unhappily married, or divorced, so you could become involved with me again?’ she said, outrage plain in her voice, and he swore under his breath.
Hell, was he never going to be able to find the right words to say to her? Was he doomed always to screw things up, and
he was screwing things up, big time, because he see her barriers going up, and he couldn’t lose her a second time, simply couldn’t.